Every Christian wants to live the life that God wants for him or her. How are we to know what is God’s plan for our lives or how God wants to use us to bless the world in this life? Having a large positive impact in the world sounds laudable, but what if that is not your destiny? There is nothing illegitimate about a life that isn’t used to help a lot of people. Following the Lord in an inward, contemplative way is equally important.
While it may not be possible to know exactly what God wants for each of our lives, there are steps we can take to increase our confidence that we are on the right path. These include checking yourself for cognitive biases, practicing prayer, contemplation, and reflection, attending church regularly, following Biblical morals, witnessing to others about Christ, and putting in an earnest effort at maximizing your worldly impact.
Cognitive bias refers to a systematic deviation from rational judgment, in which inferences about reality are formed using faulty, simplified mental processes. For example, people often assume that others are the way they are solely due to innate factors. In reality, people are formed largely by their environment and experiences. Or you may assume that something is morally okay if “everyone’s doing it.” However, even the common activities can be morally reprehensible, such as driving while impaired.
Cognitive biases are shaped by emotions, interpretation of life circumstances, past experiences, innate abilities, and social influence. For instance, a person may think that God wants her to help the homeless because she has more empathy for homelessness than any other cause, and has seen many homeless people in her community. Neither the feelings, nor the exposure to the homeless should necessarily be interpreted as God communicating something to her.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2
In rich countries, homelessness is often one of the most visible social problems, so it can be expected that people will have it top of mind among the world’s social issues. There may be problems in the community of far greater scale, such as family abuse or depression. However, due to being less visible, people won’t develop thoughts and feelings about them as much as homelessness.
Many major world problems are essentially absent in rich countries; malaria, for example. Not being exposed to malaria, people in rich countries have far less affinity for it than diseases they are more exposed to, such as cancer. It is jumping to a conclusion, however, that God therefore wants us to support cancer treatment and prevention more than malaria prevention.
While it is irrational to simply assume that all of our cognitive bias-shaped interests and inclinations are from God, it is possible to receive divine inspiration or ponder life honestly. One important way to do this is in quiet contemplation. The book of Habakkuk is about how to know what God wants you to do with your life. In it, Habakkuk recommends finding a quiet place where you can be alone with God to receive his wisdom. This can be done with eyes closed or open, praying or clearing the mind. However it is done, it is important to relax the body and let go of anger, stress, greed… anything that could be clouding your mind and receptivity to the divine.
Contemplation, including prayer, is recommended throughout the Bible and doesn’t have a downside. The “answers” you feel you have received through contemplation could be from the divine, or they could be from within yourself. If they are from yourself, however, they should still be of a higher quality than you would otherwise get when your mind is more influenced by the world and you are not making a dedicated effort at opening yourself to God’s wisdom. At its best, contemplation allows you to receive wisdom or inspiration from God. At its worst, it allows you to think clearly and make your most rational decisions. Contemplation, therefore, is an indispensable tool for making our best decisions.
An inescapable part of leading an ethical life, including actively helping others, is to break free of cognitive biases. No one is perfect, and it is impossible to be completely free of bias, but unless we minimize its effects on us, we will never be able to make clear moral judgments. The only way to overcome bias is by familiarizing ourselves with the various forms of cognitive bias and making a habit out of “testing” for them in our judgments. For example, if you feel God wants you to be a nurse, you may want to first ask yourself if this is a vocation that you are interested in for selfish reasons.
If the only reasons you want to enter the nursing field is because you think would enjoy the work and consider it a well-paid and secure career, please be honest with yourself that this is the real reason for your interest in that career path. Don’t justify your career choice religiously by telling yourself that “God wants” you in that role. If you feel that you are drawn into a field because you want to help others, you need to ask yourself a couple questions. Is this the best way that I can contribute to society? Am I drawn to this field due to my past experience, culture, or some type of self-interest?
In Western society, nursing is considered a “helping” or “caring” profession. Many people have witnessed their relatives receiving nursing care. These influences can significantly bias a person towards the field, so that he or she won’t explore alternative career paths that may produce greater counterfactual-adjusted social value. If a potential career, volunteer, or donation opportunity holds your interest after testing it for biases and examining many alternatives, perhaps that is what God wants of you!
Although it is important to examine a wide range of altruistic options and test our favorites for biases, personal fit is also important. Experience and personal interest are two important criteria to guide our decisions. For instance, if you have more experience and skill in counseling than most people, that would make you a better fit for a counseling position than most people, all biases aside. An enthusiasm for sharing your knowledge combined with more than a little patience would make you more suitable for teaching than the average person. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that education is necessarily where you should be simply because teaching comes easy to you.
Someone who is a natural at stealing and enjoys it to boot, should not assume that God, therefore, wants him to be a thief! On the contrary, a predisposition towards stealing could be an obstacle God placed in his life for him to transcend on his way to finding Christ. Perhaps God places obstacles big or small for people to overcome to be the best Christian they can be. An example could be tempting someone towards a low-impact path to see if she will choose the higher road of responding to the world’s needs over her own desires.
The divine can try to influence us in any number of ways. It could be a thought that pops into your head. It could be an experience meant to teach you something, even one in which you suffered or made mistakes. God could use people to get his message to you. It is important to be open to divine influence in any number of ways, including through your own efforts. For instance, if you worked very hard to get an education, perhaps God played a part by giving you the drive to succeed. So to with altruism. Coming across information about effective altruism on the internet, or the will to research and brainstorm how to have a maximum impact, may both be guided by the divine. Being a rational person in no way opposes the idea that God works his influence on people. In fact, it should open you up to more types of ways that God may be trying to guide you!
Job satisfaction can be found in many career paths. An NGO specializing in ethical career advice, 80,000 Hours, has studied what makes for a fulfilling job. The results may not be intuitive – it is not all about financial compensation or pre-existing interests. Here are the main factors, their review of the literature has found to influence job satisfaction:
- Work you’re good at
- Work that helps others
- Engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow (freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback)
- Supportive colleagues
- A job that meets your basic needs, like fair pay, a short commute and reasonable hours
- A job that fits your personal life
God’s plan for you will not be fulfilled inevitably, regardless of what actions you take. If this were the case, there would be no reason to put an effort into anything in life. Even religion would be frivolous, because it teaches us how God wants us to live. It may not be possible to know exactly what God expects of you as an individual. However, the best guide that reflects Christ’s teachings as well as rational analysis is that the life God wants you to have is the result of your efforts to be as good as possible. Far from being “your plan” for your life, which refers to a life that is lived purely for personal fulfillment, a life in which being and doing good is maximized, is the least selfish and most Christian life one can have.
This guidance holds up well to examination and reverse-examination: How can you live as morally good a life as possible, and still not be living as God wants you to? How can you put in only a modest effort at being and doing good and believe that this is the most Christ-inspired life that God envisioned for you? In contrast, it is hard to defend basing your life decisions solely on feelings and opportunities that arise. A criminal could follow this philosophy, for example, claiming that God intended gang life for him because he enjoys it, is good at it, and has had numerous opportunities presented to him to engage in it.
Being as good as possible includes Bible prescribed religious activities, such as prayer and worship, behaving as a Christian should in daily life such as practicing kindness and humility, and sincerely trying to maximize your positive impact in the world. The latter is only possible by assessing a wide range of options, checking your biases, and making expected value estimates based on evidence and reason, through the lens of a modern Christian. If these things are done, then you can have the greatest confidence that you are fulfilling God’s plan for you even if it doesn’t include activities that have the most potential for impact.